c. 1999 Religion News Service

WASHINGTON _ The Rev. James M. Dunn, retiring executive of the Baptist Joint Committee on Public Affairs, is called the”cowboy poet of religious liberty”by his colleague the Rev. Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for the Separation of Church and State.

Here are some examples of what Dunn has said about church-state issues:

THE NOTION OF A”NAKED PUBLIC SQUARE”WITH NO RELIGION”We don’t have a naked public square. All the politicians talk more about God than they ever have. … If anything the public square is overdressed. We’ve got more religion. I mean, they got on a fur coat in Houston in August. We’ve got more religion than we’ve ever had in the public square.”

SCHOOL PRAYER”It’ll brew from now on because it’s a political issue. It’s a leap-year issue. Every presidential election year, it’ll come up because politicians, cynical mortals that they be, will use religion to try to trump their opponents. They always try to say, `I’m the most godly. I’m the most religious.'” –“Bush and Libby and Al _ they’re all parading their religion …. The only thing that’s different about that is it’s started a year earlier.”

AMBASSADOR TO THE VATICAN”I think it’s a wrong-headed unconstitutional misappropriation of funds. Other than that it’s probably OK.”

RELIGIOUS FREEDOM RESTORATION ACT”If we’re going to have free exercise. .. there has to be some trip wire, some trigger, some legal mechanism that guarantees it and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act was an attempt to explicitly spell that out.”

PENDING THREATS TO CHURCH-STATE SEPARATION”The biggest one is the massive, massive pool of invincible ignorance and greed and selfishness and institutional advancement and racism that fuels the push for vouchers.” –“I have yet to meet a Yankee who understands the degree to which fundamentalist churches trying to get their children out of the public school system because they have to go to school with all races is behind this voucher push. I have yet to meet a religious leader _ including my best friends in the separatist community _ who’s willing to say that a lot of the push for vouchers is a greedy grab by the Roman Catholic school systems and by their bishops.”

–“It’s the biggest church-state threat of our time. … We would violate the separation of church and state and in the process destroy the public school system.”

VALUE OF PUBLIC SCHOOLS”The public schools were and are all over this land and have always been, praise God, the glue that held communities together,”he said.”It was in the public schools that Catholic kids and Baptist kids and Jewish kids learned about each other and learned to work together.”

NOTION OF”MELTING POT””I don’t like the language about melting pot. Nobody got melted. Their identity wasn’t destroyed. … `Tossed salad’ is better than melting pot.

CHOOSING HIS BATTLES”We don’t get terribly bent out of shape about some things that are probably in the most, most technical sense church-state violations _ a chaplain in the Senate and the House, `In God We Trust’ on the coin, `Under God in the Pledge of Allegiance, a creche on the courthouse lawn. … I think they’re minor. … They have very little to do with vital faith. `In God We Trust’ on the coin never sent anybody to hell or made anybody a Christian. … I just don’t get all bent out of shape over those things.”

PRESIDENT CLINTON”He’s been the best president in American history _ unless you want to include, say, Mr. Madison _ on church-state issues. … He understands what’s wrong with vouchers. He has understood what’s wrong with using religion to accomplish government goals or using government to accomplish religious goals. He has been the best president in American history on church-state issues and on religious liberty.”DEA END BANKS